Working through the power outage

I was in the office Tuesday night when the substation caught fire in Willoughby -- and for some of the next three hours while we sat around in the dark, waiting for the power to return. But the whole "no electricity" situation didn't keep us from working.

When the power went out, everyone in the office sat for a few moments, waiting for it to return. That's usually the case when the power goes out. But the lights didn't come back on. A co-worker on the copy desk, Robin Palmer, suggested that maybe a car hit a pole on Mentor Avenue, so she and I went out the front door to see if there was anything happening outside.

We walked into the visitor parking lot and to the driveway, but it didn't seem like anything was going on outside. I turned around to walk back toward the building when I noticed smoke over the treeline toward the northwest. I pointed it out to Robin, and then we heard popping noises.